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Posterous acquired by Twitter
- jerrya 15y agoSo what would the right approach be, and who would be best to approach Twitter, to convince Twitter to open source the Posterous code?
- pnathan 15y agoI am bummed, I liked the Posterous interface pretty nicely.
- SapphireSun 15y agoLikewise, it was so simple and elegant. I'm really happy for their employees, but I wish the app would stick around. I'm thinking of migrating to tumblr, and I'm doubly hoping they release a migration tool since tumblr doesn't support imports and copy paste is a bitch.
- citricsquid 15y agoSeems strange for a company this "developed" to go as part of a talent acquisition, does this imply that the company doesn't see a way to grow beyond what it is now and believes that what it is now isn't good enough to warrant continuing on with the option to join Twitter? Although I guess 4 years isn't that old in the grand scheme of things.
- brackin 15y agoI think they were trying to take on Tumblr in the earlier days but were never able to. They then tried to create a Path like product which was for families to use but kept all of the old features so it got quite confusing from a users perspective.
- wyclif 15y agoI bet Garry Tan could write a book about all this. A book that every startup should probably read.
- ig1 15y agoThey never really figured out monetization and they didn't manage to get the traction of tumblr, plus with the loss of a founder it was a hard position for them to be in. I doubt the investors made a return.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- danilocampos 15y agoSpicy. Care to elaborate?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ceejayoz 15y agoThat's a very different statement than saying someone's departure put you on the path to success. The way you originally stated it implied fairly heavily that the departed founder was a negative influence holding you back.
- nikcub 15y agolooks like i missed the best part of this thread
- ig1 15y agoEDIT: I just realized we might have crossed-wires, I was referring to the loss of Garry Tan and not the loss of Brett Gibson. Obviously you have more knowledge of Posterous than I do, but generally a founder leaving tends to have negative implications (it scares potential investors, damages momentum). I use both Tumblr and Posterous and from a user perspective when Posterous pivoted to be focused on "spaces" it seemed like the decision was panic driven. The reason that Tumblr was succeeding over Posterous wasn't due to the feature set of Tumblr but rather the community that Tumblr had. Posterous had advantages over Tumblr and in many ways it's the better blogging platform, but rather than playing on those strengths and improving them Posterous instead went after the social aspects that Tumblr was succeeding in without fully appreciating that it couldn't just take a social feature set and foist them onto it's user-base.
- alaskamiller 15y agoTumblr "won" the space. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tumblr_reels_in_big_traffic_now.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tumblr_reels_in_big_tra... WordPress.com figured out how to monetize with VIP hosting/support. Not to cheapen the work done but sometimes it's just how the cookies crumble.
- mortenjorck 15y agoIn my mind, Spaces was a pivot to a completely different market. My primary Tumblr is a photo blog, but my Posterous is a place where I share things privately with friends. Posterous has become a sort of Facebook alternative for me, and I really don't look forward to seeing it shut down.
- adrianwaj 15y agoI wonder if the name posterous was a poor choice? Sendblog or zenblog might've been better.
- soulclap 15y agoTumblr is definitely very successful but Posterous had a lot more 'serious' content. From my perspective, Tumblr is mainly for 'cool kids' showing off and a lot of it is only 'reblogging'. Posterous had actual 'blogs' and 'articles'. Sure that reputation/standing has some kind of value too?
- johnnyn 15y agoCongrats Posterous! IMO, this is one of the best teams around and Twitter will be lucky to have them on board.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mikebo 15y agoFrom their acquisition FAQ: "We’ll give you ample notice before any changes to the service and we’ll share clear instructions about how to move your content to other services. In the meantime, your Spaces will remain up and running without disruption." Sounds like posterous is not long for this world. This is a bummer, I really like posterous.
- corin_ 15y agoThe line immediately before that in the blog is "Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption." Sounds more like they're answering a potentially frequently answered question, not hinting that they'll be shutting the service.
- benatkin 15y agoReading between the lines in the article and the FAQ it seems this indeed will happen: http://posterous.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/56001-acquisition-faq http://posterous.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/56001-... > What happens to my Space? Will Posterous eventually shut down? > You can use your Space(s) exactly as you have in the past. We’ll give you ample notice before any changes or disruptions to the service and we’ll provide specific instructions for exporting your content to another service. Notice they don't actually answer the question. http://blog.twitter.com/2012/03/welcoming-posterous-team-to-flock.html http://blog.twitter.com/2012/03/welcoming-posterous-team-to-... > Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better. Sounds like they'll be working on Twitter, not Posterous. It doesn't say anything about people at Twitter working at Posterous, so it doesn't sound like a merge.
- jamesaguilar 15y agoThey can't exactly promise to remain up forever. That's not in their control post-acquisition.
- ceejayoz 15y ago
- webwanderings 15y agoThis simply means that Twitter will fill its own void of 140 characters and above space. I think it's a win-win for everyone. Without more-than-140-characters, the Twitter remains simply the link sharing platform. With a blogging service attached to its hip, they (Twitter) can compete with FB and Google Plus.
- edbloom 15y agothis. At first glance I assumed "talent acquisition" but I was only thinking today (uncanny timing) that twitter really needs more content distribution channels to gain more mainstream usage. This together with the Summify acquisition point to the possibility that twitter is going to change it's content distribution model from pure streams of content to more curated, blog style channels. I think there's huge potential in this. Let's see what happens.
- iag 15y agoThis is a bit odd to me as an acquisition. It's unlikely to be a talent acquisition given the userbase/brand of posterous, but the two product doesn't seem to mesh at all IMO. Does anyone have a theory as to what's the synergy behind these two companies that could justify an acquisition?
- HardyLeung 15y agoPerhaps Twitter wants to own all things micro-blogging (that's the term Twitter's Chinese competitor uses), whatever that means.
- sbierwagen 15y agoPosterous isn't really micro-blogging. It's regular blogging. Macro-blogging.
- jemfinch 15y agoUntil Steve Yegge's using the platform, it doesn't qualify for the term "macro-blogging".
- rhizome 15y agoTo be sure, Twitter's non-tweet features need a lot of improvement.
- petegrif 15y agogood question - I don't get it either.
- bdz 15y agowhat about video sharing? as the twitter for iphone app always had the option to upload to posterous. twitter successfully launched the photo uploading, now is the time for videos
- chrisacky 15y agoThe FAQ was reallly difficult to gauge the overall direction that Posterous is headed. I use Posterous for my personal and startup blogs. Reading the Posterous FAQ, they barely use any "exciting" colloquialisms. Everything is cast in a shadow of uncertainty. In fact, I would probably go far as saying this is one of the worst acquisition FAQ's I've read. I'm very pleased for the Posterous team, but you haven't truely given any insight as to where you plan to be in 6 months from now. Some startups are just "aqhirisations", and from a cynical reading this sounds all too familiar. I could be wrong, and perhaps the author of that article just never read Shakespeare, because right now I can see the clouds overhead.
- sbierwagen 15y agoGet out now. If this follows the pattern of, say, every talent acquisition ever, they'll shut down the site and delete all user data in 3-6 months.
- adgar 15y ago> The FAQ was reallly difficult to gauge the overall direction that Posterous is headed. Given the effort that goes into carefully negotiating the acquisition process, you can be sure that this lack of clarity is not an accident.
- bryanh 15y agoBegin countdown until shutdown...
- tatsuke95 15y agoAlso begin countdown until potential customers/users/regular people start saying, "I'm not signing up for another service that I can't trust will still exist next year." Sad to say, but every time I find myself using a tool or site regularly, this crosses my mind...
- sachinag 15y agoCongrats to Good/Real Sachin, Garry, and all the rest of the team!
- hopeless 15y agoDoes anyone else see this as a YC/VC-success but a business-failure? I'd be far more impressed if they grew Posterous into a profitable company. And so this team is moving from one unprofitable company to another. Disappointing :(
- blasterford 15y agoAdd it to the pile.... Reddit, Loopt, Posterous...
- nl 15y agoAnd so this team is moving from one unprofitable company to another There's a pretty good chance Twitter is already profitable[1][2]. If they aren't then it's pretty clear they can do a facebook and turn on the profits when they choose. [1] http://mashable.com/2011/09/29/twitter-revenue-to-hit-400-million-by-2013-study/ http://mashable.com/2011/09/29/twitter-revenue-to-hit-400-mi... [2] http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-30/tech/30012755_1_twitter-advertisers-revenue http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-06-30/tech/30012755...
- callmeed 15y agoIn a small way, every talent acquisition poisons the well for future, bootstrapped startups. It erodes the confidence of users and potential customers. People put their company blog on Posterous, they add their business to GoWalla, they gave AdGrok a few hours of their time, etcetera, etcetera. I'm not saying I would turn down the offer. But I fear the long-term effect of all these acqui-hires is my potential customers saying "No thanks. I doubt you geeks will be around in 18 months" when I market to them.
- larrys 15y agoI agree with you but this is really a business issue not a startup issue. Apple killed newton, clones, xserve and other products. I'm sure you can think of more. Sun killed cobalt servers. GM killed Oldsmobile, Pontiac etc. Survival of the fittest. All the warm fuzzy folksy stuff (that you don't see in traditional business - you know things like a dog at the office or free food) means very little in the end. They will do what they need to do to survive.
- callmeed 15y agoThe difference is (a) most hardware is owned on premises and Sun can't simply walk in your server closet and yank it out, and (b) these companies usually provide support for hardware for a few years after the product is shelved. If I'm not mistaken, auto manufacturers are required to have certain parts/service available for a few years after the production of each model. With web startups, you get (at best) an email with 90 days notice.
- larrys 15y agoYou're right with hardware there are end of life notices that extend for several years. And even third parties that support the equipment. (Of course the software or OS might be a different story.) But more importantly there is an ongoing concern that has a reputation (not the same with an entire company folding) and the product killed is just a part of many products that are offered. And of course they are charging for something whereas in the case of web startups what they are giving you is free. So there is no "consideration" and as a result I would think they are not subject to any class action lawsuits. How can you sue for something you didn't pay for?
- Steveism 15y agoThis reminds me of a blog post from Maciej, the creator of Pinboard, regarding why sometimes free services aren't all they're cracked up to be: http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
- shingen 15y agoAmazing, a top 500 global site (roughly), that appears likely to just close up shop. What the hell is that? Hey Twitter, how about you give me the platform, we'll split 50/50 anything I make with it, I'll assume all the downside liability. Posterous can go a lot further. This is a failure of imagination.
- desireco42 15y agoAgreed
- chintan 15y agohttps://www.quantcast.com/posterous.com https://www.quantcast.com/posterous.com Although this is just a subset of their total traffic, they were consistently doubling traffic every 4 months or so.
- shingen 15y agoYep, it had a very real business opportunity. It really does make me want to take a run at getting the platform from Twitter, if they are in fact going to close it down. I've got the perfect name to rebrand it with, far better than the Posterous name. Twitter might see serious tax benefits from shutting it down after the acquisition unfortunately. To them it might be worth more dead than alive.
- wavephorm 15y agoYep, it had a very real business opportunity. Obviously the founders knew otherwise. They saw how difficult it would be to go for the long haul, and calculated it would be better just to take the Twitter job offers.
- shingen 15y agoIt'd be the first time founders were wrong, right? Obviously once Posterous took the A & B $10 million in venture funding, their clock was seriously ticking. The founders no longer had real control over the company or its future. It wouldn't surprise me if they were diluted down to 10% or less ownership each, which wipes out the incentive to continue with a situation where you're going to see nearly zero payout due to VC terms unless you build an absolute monster company. No matter what they did, due to the VC they took on, they were unlikely to have a long term time horizon unless they were 'beating' Tumblr. It was get extraordinarily big or go home, because apparently #500 wasn't big enough. So they bailed, and it probably made perfect sense for their situations.
- sidcool 15y agoThis is indeed big news.
- siculars 15y agoI would have paid for their service. What happens to my blog now? Will all those links get /dev/nulled? Or are we gonna get to set up some 301's?
- jarek 15y agoHahaha. Startups don't do 301s. If you have any questions regarding what will happen to your links, consult http://tr.im/ http://tr.im/. Self-host anything you consider important enough to warrant a 301 down the road.
- 1123581321 15y agoIf you used a custom domain you can grab all your URLs and redirect them with rewrites on your new hosting.
- nwenzel 15y agoSo now when I tweet, will it push that tweet to Twitter so all my Twitter followers will know that I tweeted?
- haydenchambers 15y agoyou could already do that http://ifttt.com/ http://ifttt.com/
- kmfrk 15y agoLooks like it was your time to move on, Posterous! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1455593 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1455593 If I worked at Tumblr, I'd put the blog post in my link in a glass frame.
- robryan 15y agoYeah was thinking about that campaign when I saw this thread. Sure it was arrogant and bent the truth but was probably effective at exposing a greater number of users to the platform.
- sunnysideup 15y agoIs Twitter profitable? It seems one company without a business model acquires another company without business model?
- x5315 15y agoTwitter has a business model. It's working fine. See: http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-interview-twitter-chief-revenue-officer-adam-bain-2011-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-interview-twitter-c...
- startupEmployee 15y agoAs a startup employee, I'm curious to know how much do employees stand to gain from such talent acquisitions?
- jimboyoungblood 15y agoyou get to keep your job. that's (usually) better than not having a job.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- a4agarwal 15y agosigh. So much false information in this thread. Everyone who joined Twitter was handsomely rewarded for their hard work and their accomplishments at Posterous. We're taking much of what we built at Posterous to make Twitter a more powerful platform. If the employees simply got to keep their job, they wouldn't have accepted the Twitter offer and instead have joined another startup. There are plenty of great opportunities out there.
- netmau5 15y agoI guess it's too late to apply.
- dredmorbius 15y agoThis would mean that prior to this acquisition, Twitter was preposterous. </ducks>
- pfraze 15y agoEither you ducked too early, or your XML is malformed.
- dredmorbius 15y agoThe ducks tag is always well-formed, by definition. All your ducks are in a row.
- charlieok 15y agoScore one more for people and organizations who invested in running their own site on their own servers (or vm instances).
- robertp 15y agoI was an early user of Posterous and got our whole company to setup multiple sub-domains when each of us tweeted out photos. At the time it was the best because you didn't have any ads showing up alongside a photo (like twitpic). Im sad to see posterous otherwise give up and just move to twitter. I feel like if they would have kept innovating 2-3 or so years ago then they would be at a much better place. What are their goals before they got bought? It wasnt clear to me.
- chubs 15y agoCan anyone suggest a way to port your posterous blog to tumblr, retaining the url's and the comments (i believe tumblr uses disqus for comments) ?
- k-mcgrady 15y agoTumblr doesn't do comments. You need to add Disqus yourself. The blog post says that Posterous will have export options in the coming weeks.
- kevinwdavid 15y agoThis was very much expected.Posterous was apparently not doing well. Compared to tumblr, it was to hard to post content. With not much an engaging user base compared to tumblr or wordpress, posterous acquistion by someother company was expected.
- usablebytes 15y agoGreat. I feel happy for the Posterous guys. Many congratulations!
- majani 15y agoIs acquihire just a Silicon Valley concept? Where I'm from, a big company is probably gonna offer you a massive salary rather than buy out a product with no potential.
- revorad 15y agoCongrats Sachin and team. HN Y U SO HATE?
- VonLipwig 15y agoThis makes you wonder about the current supply of talented developers. Where has that supply gone? I see no reason why Twitter would aquire Posterous for any reason other than the experience that the staff have. As far as I am aware Posterous doesn't hold any valued patents. It doesn't appear to be leading the way in pioneering technology. I don't really see how the site itself fits in with Twitter's strategy. It looks like a smash and grab to get more staff. Is this a statement about the typically applicant Twitter recieves when looking to hire? Its also a shame as aquisition's like this are happening more and more often killing off fairly popular websites in the process.
- nakkiel 15y agoI think they just want to add more coupling between the two platforms. Sure enough, Twitter could write such a platform on their own but perhaps it's more time-efficient to just buy legacy technology and adapt it. Even more so when you get the staff who built the said technology along with it. Another aspect is the user-base that will come with Posterous.
- skrebbel 15y agoHorrible. Do founders not care about their own products anymore? Or is this just forced-by-the-VCs? I don't generally mind when this happens with a services firm, or a tool with very few users, but Posterous? We all moved our Wordpresses there. True enough, we all got it for free so we can't complain, but I can't help feel that the Posterous owners let something lovely fly. Ahwell, no 10x ROI eh?
- pnayak 15y agoApart from the employees from posterous, does posterous as a business/brand make sense for twitter? Quite frankly, i don't see any synergies.. Any thoughts..
- justinkelly 15y agoAs a long time posterous user I'm not happy about this - twitter will put posterous in maintenance mode. I've decided to do something about it I've setup http://p.ostero.us http://p.ostero.us A paid Octpress based blogging service for the ex-posterous users - using an awesome blog platform - makes money - and thats not ganna get purchased and killed off Hopefully this will help other posterous user wondering where to go * http://p.ostero.us http://p.ostero.us * http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3713092 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3713092